Monday, February 12, 2018

Aubrey Hamilton Reviews: Sign Off by Patricia McLinn

Sign
Off
by Patricia McLinn (Craig Place Books, 2015) is the first mystery in her Caught
Dead in Wyoming series. Elizabeth Danniher (E.M.) was a successful television
journalist until her marriage to a network executive fell apart. In sheer
spite, he arranges for her to work out the remainder of her contract in a small
town in Wyoming where she is allowed two segments a week on the consumer
protection beat. She rents a ramshackle house that includes a ghostly figure in
her back yard that might be a very thin dog. She sets food and water out every
day that disappears, even though she doesn’t see the animal that consumes them.

Going through the motions as she tries to come to
terms with her changed life, she is pulled accidentally into the inquiry
surrounding the disappearance of a roundly disliked sheriff’s deputy. The
deputy disappeared six months previously but nothing much seems to have been
done to locate him. The County Prosecutor and the County Sheriff are derisive
of her attempts and discourage them at every opportunity, but she decides to continue
to ask questions in order to keep her investigative skills sharp. The station
sports anchor decides he wants in on the action and the two make a good team,
using his local knowledge and contacts and using her professional journalistic
expertise. While no evidence of the deputy’s death has been found, everyone
assumes that he is dead and the rancher whose wife the deputy filched is
responsible. E.M. finds this assumption of guilt premature, especially since
the deputy seemed to have given a lot of people cause to wish him ill.

The staff of KWMT-TV in Sherman,
Wyoming, is unfriendly and suspicious but the news anchor is downright hostile.
The various ways he manages to upstage E.M. and make her look bad show the
author is well acquainted with newsroom backstabbing. The station manager is
under the news anchor’s thumb so he is able to make E.M.’s office life
miserable.

The description of Wyoming, the
land and its people, is wonderful, and E.M. is vividly depicted, floundering
personally and professionally after a devastating divorce. Her interactions with her tight-knit family underline
her exile far away from everyone she knows and loves. Well-paced and written,
unfortunately the plot has holes; it is not clear to me how the resolution was
reached, as satisfying as it was. A pleasant read on the cozy end of the
spectrum. Review is based on the Kindle
version.

Kevin's Corner

Sandi's Cancer Fight Is Over

Thank you for your prayers, thoughts, and support for the past six years plus as Sandi did everything she could to be here with all of us. She is now free and not hurting anymore. I am still trying to pay off her past treatments at Medical City Dallas Hospital as well as at Texas Oncology. While the hospital can't handle direct donations, if you can help and would prefer to donate directly, please contact Debra, the financial counselor at TEXAS ONCOLOGY in SUITE 220 of Building D at Medical City Dallas Hospital in Dallas, Texas. We thank you for your prayers, thoughts, and support for the past six years plus as Sandi did everything she could to be here with all of us.